


Lights Out

by violenteer



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: (I'm talking about Eddie), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 08:17:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10658601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violenteer/pseuds/violenteer
Summary: Waylon considers what's happened to him.





	Lights Out

Waylon looked up at the sky, finally free, to find rain. He went through countless different emotions trying to figure out how he saw the weather. His heart was set on happiness and familiarity. But when he looked back to the crumpled behemoth of a person in tow, he wondered if maybe he was wrong. Maybe the rain was penance instead.

 

Eddie wasn’t aware of the change in the heavens. He was too preoccupied with digging the rusty nails from his forearms, growling occasionally. Sometimes he would glance at Waylon’s feet, but Waylon was sure that was only so he knew they hadn’t grown apart. Or rather, that Waylon didn’t take off running for the nearest abandoned jeep to climb in and skitter off. There were countless camo-covered military vehicles out front. Each one looked more intimidating than the one that came before.

 

Would it be easy to drive out of this place? Waylon wondered, biting his lip and experimentally touching the stab wound at his side. The barest of glances on it sent eruptions of pain spewing from the source and down, Waylon’s nerve endings screaming in obvious alarm. His blood was still trailing down, a steady and warm beat to the rest of the demented musical his life became.

 

Even if he did manage to find keys, even if he managed to get them both on the road, how long until Eddie snapped? How long until he started chomping at the bit, asking Waylon when he’d like to be made ‘perfect’? How long until he pulled them both over and just did it? Waylon wasn’t safe. He’d used Eddie for protection, and as much as he wanted him to change, Eddie seemed to have been set on a dial. He could only think, speak, and want certain things. The rest of existence was impertinent.

 

“Gluskin,” Waylon called, feeling sick.

 

Eddie perked up at the mention of his name, but his eyes were glassy with pain and disorientation. Most likely, he’d never seen the front of this building. Most likely, he hadn’t been in open air for at least a decade.

 

Almost as if reading Waylon’s mind, Eddie started to survey the world around himself. He furrowed his brows in a menacing display of distrust. Maybe he didn’t like what he saw; Waylon couldn’t possibly guess.

 

“Waylon?” he returned distantly.

 

Waylon clenched his jaw and shook his head.

 

“You’re not gonna cut my dick off while we’re driving, are you?”

 

Immediately after he’d gotten it out, he started laughing. It was one of the most idiotic things he’d ever heard himself say with complete solemnity. But he needed some answer. Even a lie. Even a lie, at this point. He could make himself believe it.

 

Waylon pitched his tired body into a standing position and limped over to Eddie himself. He leaned on the water fountain in the center of Murkoff’s driveway and panted. He really shouldn’t have been moving.

 

On cue, Eddie stood and loomed over Waylon like the doting husband he was programmed to be. Only now he looked as distant as he sounded. With shaking hands, he gripped either side of Waylon’s arms and shook his head.

 

Waylon blinked hard enough to make sure he was fully awake. He’d never seen any patient from ‘Massive so lucid as to answer someone directly. Not Manera, not Trager, and certainly not Walker (although officially he wasn’t supposed to have seen Walker before that day).

 

“You are not my wife.” Eddie said simply, and bent down to press a kiss to Waylon’s cheek.

 

It was eerily kind, eerily soft. Waylon wanted to know when he was going to have his neck wrung, but as seconds, and then minutes, ticked by, he realized it wasn’t coming.

 

“No…” Waylon responded slowly. “I’m not.”

 

Eddie looked, against what he was saying and against the odds of his entire mindset, hopeful. Waylon’s stomach twisted to imagine why, but he wouldn’t ask for anything beside his immediate safety.

 

He thought of his family and the small photo he’d kept in his wallet. How that was burned along with the rest of his personal effects in the fireplace Blaire tended to. Would Lisa accept him as he was, now? Did Waylon want her to? He realized with a twisted, rueful smile that he no longer knew. He’d been trying so desperately to hold onto his old life, but he had no idea if it was still his to keep.

 

Waylon looked past Eddie’s solid form, back up to the clouds. The water would reach them soon. Eddie and Waylon both might come clean, their wounds and battle paint leeching from them in slow efforts. Every bit of agony they endured would reduce to nothing at all; they would have only memory to remind them.

 

All that death, all that destruction. The debauchery and the madness and the deep black of those whose souls had mixed and mashed with the likes of Murkoff. None of it would mean anything to those looking from the outside, in. They might feel the empty and safe-hearted sympathy that all people feel toward what is violent and damned. But that… that would be all. They wouldn’t think of Jeremy Blaire as anything more than a bad guy.

 

Nor Eddie Gluskin as anyone more than deeply flawed, and flawing in return.

 

 _Jesus_. Would any real justice find the likes of the living? 

 

Maybe the rain wasn’t a happiness or a sadness, Waylon decided. Maybe it was just rain.


End file.
